Over the past decade, the University of Colorado Boulder has established itself as a national leader in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, education.

Through its Learning Assistant and CU Teach programs and Integrating STEM initiative, CU-Boulder is making great progress on its goal of improving introductory math and science classes and recruiting and training future K-12 science teachers.

Responding to a national crisis, CU-Boulder is putting a fresh face on how science and math courses are taught. One of those faces is Sarah Berger, who likes teaching and teaches well. But she is neither a faculty member nor a graduate-student teaching assistant. She is a sophomore in biochemistry and a learning assistant— or LA.

As she explains, students are comfortable with her because “they know that I don’t have all the answers either, so they don’t feel like I’ll think their questions are silly or dumb.”